Abstract: An automated system for signing up users invited to join a site based on their existing identity includes an invitation generator, an invite processor, a federated authentication module, a user information retrieval module, an account population and creation module, and a user interface module. The automated sign up module is responsive to an invite request. The automated sign up module sends an authorization request, receives the authorization response, verifies the response and retrieves user data. The automated sign up module uses the retrieved data to populate a sign up form and initialize an account. The automated sign up module sends new account information to a user for confirmation. Once confirmation has been received, the automated sign up module creates the new account and allows the user to access the system. The present disclosure includes a method for signing up users invited to join a site based on their existing identity.

Abstract: A web service provider identifies electronic devices that are associated with a particular user by using device parameters, and user agents strings to cluster the user's web service requests determine whether the requests in each cluster originated from a single device or multiple devices. For any cluster having requests from multiple devices, the provider will analyze the scheduling cookies associated with each request to determine how many devices submitted the requests in each cluster. The system will then store identified devices and their characteristics in a profile for the user. Then, when the user submits a new web service request, the web service provider can compare data in the request such as device parameters, user agent strings and/or cookies to identify the device from which the new request originated.